How to make USB thumbdrive bootable?

[Mike Matheny]

Many PC manufacturers (Dell) are not putting floppies in the new systems,
instead claiming you can use USB thumbdrives as subsitutes. Well, that's
just fine, but I cannot find any way in XP to format a USB thumbdrive and
make it bootable - that option is grayed out!

 

[R. McCarty]

Yes, that's a problem for sure. The most likely way to do it, would be
download a Boot Floppy image (98,etc) and try to apply it to the USB
drive as the destination. You'll also have to set your BIOS boot sequence
to "Boot USB" devices. You could try a Sys command, but that's a
Catch-22 as a Dos Boot won't have visibility to the USB drive. Check
Google for USB Thumbdrive Images - Somebody has probably cobbled
out a solution. If you find it, post the link as I would like to know how to
do it as well.

 

[Plato]

Many PC manufacturers (Dell) are not putting floppies in the new systems,

Which makes it hard to test if a cdrom drive problem is windows related
or hardware related.

 

[CS]

Many PC manufacturers (Dell) are not putting floppies in the new systems,
instead claiming you can use USB thumbdrives as subsitutes. Well, that's
just fine, but I cannot find any way in XP to format a USB thumbdrive and
make it bootable - that option is grayed out!

You can do it from DOS. Your Dell should have a BIOS option that
turns on USB legacy support which means that the thumb drive can be
"seen" from a DOS boot. The catch is that you will have to create a
bootable DOS CD, boot with the CD, and then transfer the OS to the
thumb drive.

The Dell should also have a BIOS option selection where you can choose
to boot from an external USB device. If it doesn't have that, it
won't do any good to make the thumb drive bootable.

 

[Gene K]

You can buy External Floppie Drives at Office Depot, Staples, etc.
Whether you can Boot from them or any external I cannot answer. It
appears to me that that there would have to be a enabling option in the
BIOS to accomplish such action and at present mine does not have such a
feature.
Gene K